Green Logic employee Amanda Strecker helps a customer check out Nov. 7 at the store at the corner of Linden and Jefferson streets in Fort Collins. / Dawn Madura/The Coloradoan

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What’s next?

An open house for the public to discuss some of the issues around the city’s social services network will be held from 6-8 p.m. Dec. 2 in the community room, 215 Mason St., Fort Collins.

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Green Logic, an Old Town Fort Collins store selling environmentally friendly products, plans to close at the end of January, due in part to increasing issues with transients congregating in Jefferson Park and in front of the store’s doorway.

Colleen Barricklow, who owns Green Logic with her husband Jason Cohencious, said construction projects near their store at the corner of Jefferson and Linden streets, coupled with an increase in loitering, have reached the point point “where going forward we don’t want to continue to struggle with that.”

Jefferson Park — owned by Union Pacific and leased to the city — is often a gathering spot for transients who get a hot meal and bed at the Fort Collins Rescue Mission across Linden Street from the park and are turned loose during the day.

“The city and police’s hands are tied in dealing with some of this,” said Barricklow, who has owned Green Logic for eight years. Problems “have come to a head.”

During the summer “it feels like a lot of people are hanging out at the park, it’s become a place where people know they can be openly intoxicated ... it’s sort of this kind of free zone, which has been really frustrating,” she said. “The police, fire department are in the park almost every day. Oftentimes it spills over here ... there will be people hanging out on the bench in front. There’s a lot of foul language and fighting going on — it doesn’t create a very happy atmosphere for shoppers.”

Fort Collins police Sgt. Dean Cunningham said problems are not necessarily exacerbated during the summer, but police will move transients along if they are hanging out in front of stores and disrupting business. Jefferson Park is a public park and as such people have a right to be there, he said. “When the park is open we don’t have a lot of say in whether someone is there just hanging out.”

The city is in the process of trying to define where the real conflicts occur and offer strategies to resolve them, said Sue Beck-Ferkiss, a social sustainability specialist. Enforcement of issues is complaint driven, she said, and police rely on shop owners to let them know when problems occur.

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“It’s a balancing act,” Beck-Ferkiss said. “Police are pretty responsible when shop owners call, but sometimes they’re limited in what they can do. It’s not against the law to sit on a park bench.”

The city is holding a series of upcoming meetings to discuss the issues with local no-profits and the public.

“We have looked at all our ordinances to see if there are additional things we need to do but we have not come to resolution on that,” Beck-Ferkiss said.

As of Thursday, Fort Collins police had responded to 116 calls for service at Jefferson Park this year, Cunningham said. “We try to be partners with business and they need to tell us when things are happening so we can deal with it right then.”

But a business’ rights do not supersede the rights of the transient or homeless population. “We try to police it as professionally and compassionately as possible,” he said.

The city’s economic health office hasn’t had any complaints from downtown businesses, said Josh Birks, the city’s economic health director. “Certainly anytime a business is looking to leave downtown we want to reach out and understand why and what and if there’s anything we can do to help.”

Barricklow said she has a lot of respect for the right of everyone to share the space “but our particular corner is a tough corner to hold down from the perspective of getting people to come down here to shop. A lot of customers have told us they don’t like coming down here after certain hours.”

It isn’t only issues with transients that are forcing Barricklow and Cohencious to close up shop. An endless array of construction projects, the promise of more to come and the tendency to block the street during downtown festivals and fairs have only exacerbated the problems, Barricklow said. Old Town Square is due for a makeover in 2015 and may extend down Linden Street. And, improvements in the Poudre River District across Jefferson Street are sure to mean more construction, she said.

“We already lived through construction of the alley and down to the river,” she said. “It was just brutal for us.” And the pipe the city laid down Jefferson Street earlier this year “was devastating. All those things combined with tough economic times over the last few years and it’s looking kind of grim.”